NASA Released news on Feb 2, 2011 about the findings of Their Kepler Planet hunting spacecraft! This is Big. While the 68 Confirmed Earth like planets don't seem too promising for life as we know it so far; The sheer number of "Stellar Systems" is overwhelming. And this was only a survey of 1/400th of the sky! http://kepler.nasa.gov/

What are your thoughts ?

The Beauty of The Scientific Method , is the Anticipation of a Better Explanation.

I saw a bunch of stories this week about planets being found. I think it's really exciting. I thought I saw one story about planets being found in the so-called "zone of life" but perhaps it was just talking about that zone. It was a crazy week for me at work and I was consumed by Egypt in my spare time so the few extra things I read did not really sink in.

I think this is just incredible in general. I love the age we live in due to all the possibilities. As for the discoveries and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, due to the vasts distances involved we may not confirm other life in the universe for decades, and I will be surprised if it happens in my lifetime (unfortunately - I do hope to live to see that though) and we may never be able to contact them, but at this point I think the odds that we are all alone in the universe are just very, very small.

Shackle their minds when they're bent on the cross
When ignorance reigns, life is lost

Yes BnW; It is incredible times we live in. I too don't think we are going to contact "ET" anytime soon, but the Idea is that there are Countless stars similar to our Sun with even more countless planets to investigate weather or not they are in "The Goldilocks" Zone. In the recent past, We considered
that it was certainly highly probable that life existed out there, but we didn't think that there were that many possibilities!

The Beauty of The Scientific Method , is the Anticipation of a Better Explanation.

300 years from now, someone will be asking why he or she (or it, who knows what kind of funky shit will be going down in the future) wasn't born 300 years later. Alas, the pace of technological progress, barring any major catastrophes, will always seem to be on the brink of the cutting edge, and our short life spans can only encounter a limited degree of the true capacity of human imagination. Imagine the people living in the early 19th century who wished they could live to see the birth of electricity. Imagine what they would see and think now.

Kind of makes you want to wish for immortality, which may just be possible had I been born 300 years in the future....

(05-02-2011 04:55 PM)TruthAddict Wrote: It means we are not alone. This doesn't prove that, but it merely shows the inevitability of life in a universe so large.

Precisely. The original question is: "How common is life in the Universe", (Or even in our galaxy alone). Then you start to break this question into separate but related parts; so for the sake of argument, Assume life is prolific, then "How common is animal life, and then intelligent life? Continue by asking; "Therefore, how many stars have planets orbiting them and what percentage of those planets are in the "Goldilocks" zone of their Star?"...

Well needless to say this thought experiment usually yields far less then Kepler has already found! That's what's So Exciting!

The Beauty of The Scientific Method , is the Anticipation of a Better Explanation.

Well if we do find life, who says it has to be as similar to ours ? A small variation in gravity and the results of our planet would be totally different. And I'm curios how intelligent its environment made it. I mean , some very specific conditions made us what we are , could those conditions be the same ?